Sherman and Denison have a sort of big brother, little brother relationship. In the early years, the Sherman newspapers referred to the city to the north as “little Denny.” Denison may not like it, but that is the way it is. Or perhaps was. The fact is, “little Denny” has grown up.

Susan and Marvin Watley were in the southern latitudes on a round-the-world cruise when the barometer started falling and the seas began to rise. Marvin was down, injured from a fall a few days before, and that left Susan to manage the ocean-sailing yacht alone.

An estimated 3.5 billion wire hangers go into U.S. landfills every year, and they sit there for over a hundred years. That does not count the 1.25 million hangers in my closet at home. Leave it to American ingenuity to identify a problem and turn it into an advertising campaign. A New York company, EcoHanger®, is making a 100%-recyclable, biodegradable clothes hanger made of paper.

One. It’s the number of stars in the Texas flag. It’s the number of U.S. Presidents who have conducted the OU-Texas pre-game coin toss. And it’s the number of shirts lost by Texas Laundry in the last six months. For a business that handles upwards of 1,000 garments per day, the statistic is unbelievable.

Just 17 miles southeast of Sherman on US 69 and SH 11 in extreme east Grayson County, Whitewright is a prototypical Texas town with one foot in the past and the other firmly planted in the here-and-now. Settlers from Kentucky established the area in the late 1800s. Whitewright was a land rich for cultivation and cattle, a wilderness of grasses, flowers and forest.

He is the new man in town, tall and imposing, wearing boots and dressed in black and a big white hat, and he vows to clean up the little Texas town. It is a staple of the programmer Western. Any silver screen cowboy worth a box of popcorn has played the role. But sometimes life imitates art, and things play out as they do in the movies. Well, sort of, anyway.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was born in LeClaire, Iowa, in 1846. During his early life he herded cattle and worked as a driver on a wagon train, went on to fur trapping and gold mining, then joined the Pony Express in 1860. After the Civil War, Cody scouted for thearmy and gained the nickname “Buffalo Bill” as a hunter.

As pilot Bruce Lemoine brought his Japanese Zero in for a landing, everyone watched anxiously. The war birds have a tendency to tip over on the propeller, fellow pilot Dan Eshelman said as the plane closed on the runway. Lemoine lined up his plane for a landing on the grass next to the runway to soften the blow to the prop in case the WWII bird tipped, but the extra precautions were unnecessary.

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Every region of the country seems to take a perverse pride in its own brand of nasty weather. “If you don’t like the weather in (Texas, Georgia, Maine, Wyoming—you fill in the blank) just come back tomorrow.” People love to boast of their triumph over adversity. “Why, it was so cold, the firemen just turned on the hose and then shinnied down the icicle that was formed.” It also is axiomatic that however bad it is now, it was worse back when. “Hot? Why back in the summer of (insert preferred year here), it was so hot that folks were baking cakes on the screened-in porch.”

The year was 1956. Bootlegging was the number one crime in Grayson County and a way of life in Sherman and Denison. Thirsty drinkers were willing pay for their liquor, and a bootlegger could double his money hauling hooch up US 75, the two-lane ribbon of concrete that connected Sherman to Dallas.

The couple had a wish list for their perfect home. They wanted a master suite addition, an enlarged kitchen, a pantry and a laundry room, as well as a den with room for a television that Lawrence could call his own private space. Peggy drew plans to divide the existing large master bedroom into a pantry for the expanded kitchen, a guest bedroom, a utility room, and a hallway to access the new master bedroom suite that would be added onto the rear of the house. After several meetings they finalized the plans to start construction.

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